WORKER’S WOES IN IRAN
Mansour Osanloo, who heads the Tehran bus workers' union, was thrown into the infamous Evin prison for the third time last month, after a highly successful European trip on which he tried to inform his Western trade-union brothers of the mounting repression against Iranian workers. During his previous incarcerations, Osanloo had been brutally tortured. Films were distributed showing bruises on his body, and his tongue had been slit. One of Osanloo's fellow union organizers, Mahmoud Salehi of the Saqez Bakery Workers' Association, has been jailed in the city of Sanandaj (Kurdistan Province), where he is said to be in serious medical difficulties. The International Trade Union Confederation and the International Transport Workers' Federation have appropriately called for pickets, protests, and letter-writing campaigns demanding the release of these two brave men. So far as I know, no labor union is planning to demonstrate for them in this country, and certainly the American government has not said a word on their behalf.
THE LEFT’S ANTI-MILITARY DISHONESTY
What began as a controversy over the credibility of the New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" is morphing into questions about the integrity of Franklin Foer, editor of the venerable liberal magazine. The controversy began July 13 when the Diarist, a soldier in Iraq, wrote of three instances of shocking behavior. The soldier has now been identified as Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp. It is clear that he lied - either to Army investigators or to the magazine. But why was the liberal magazine's editor so eager to believe his lies? [Note by JW: Franklin Foer interviewed me at length for a story he was writing on the Reagan Doctrine in 2003. The description and quotes of me are accurate, but the whole article turned out to be an anti-conservative screed. The cover story, Founding Fakers, in the August 18, 2003 issue of The New Republic, demonstrates Foer's left-wing intellectual dishonesty.]
THE BOURNE ABSURDITY
I took my sons, Brandon and Jackson, to see the latest episode of Matt Damon's film franchise, The Bourne Ultimatum. Like its predecessors, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, it's great edge-of-the-seat entertainment and extremely well-directed, a first-rate example of action-genre film-making craft. For anyone who knows anything about the CIA, it is also totally absurd. You probably know the films' premise. Damon plays Jason Bourne, a CIA assassin who has suffered amnesia due to a botched hit attempt. His efforts to recover his identity and memories arouse the suspicion of CIA officials running illegal secret programs, who then send out a succession of assassins to eliminate him. The term "CIA assassin," of course, will bring an instant guffaw of cynical laughter to those familiar with Langley. Proof that such folks do not exist is that Hugo Chavez is not dead. Movies love to portray CIA "assets" (as the Bourne films call them) as incredibly skilled and deadly, ruthless professional Terminators - whose mission is to hunt down either each other or innocent civilians, never actual bad guys and real enemies of the US. Why can't Hollywood make a spy-action flick with at least a semblance of reality to it - say about a super-agent faced with world-class incompetence and collusion of CIA operatives in Pakistan, who end-runs them and goes for the villains within the Pakistani government who run both the Taliban terrorists and the heroin smuggling in Afghanistan? That's what's really going on - the CIA led around with a Pak ring through its nose, rather than the movie image of hyper-efficiency and competence - and Hollywood is as clueless about it as Barack Hussein Obama Junior.
THE ARCTIC OCEAN PIE
While chilling here in Sumatra (see Sumatra Sunrise) after writing an exposition of one entire ocean (the Indian: see The French Ocean), I never thought I'd soon be writing about another, and one so far away. Yet the Russians' stunt of planting their flag on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole is such a dangerous joke that I'm compelled to do so. The joke is on the Russians, for there already is an American flag planted there. Evidently, the six Ruskie explorers in their Mir mini-subs didn't look around very much when they reached the sea floor at 14,000 feet down. If they had, they would have seen the stars and stripes - or at least what it's encased in. It's quite a story of how that American flag got there. And it provides quite an opportunity to create an Arctic Ocean Pie - one that the UN doesn't get a slice of.
A PRO-AMERICAN SHOCKER FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sometimes where a thing is said is bigger news than what was said. That happened on Monday, when The New York Times ran a guest op-ed entitled A War We Just Might Win detailing the progress in Iraq. Long before the fall of Baghdad, The New York Times was as dogmatically pessimistic about the Bush administration's efforts as it was gushingly supportive of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. It even promoted the least-qualified op-ed writer in North America as its point man for its attacks on our military: Frank Rich, whose experience was with ballet slippers, not combat boots. Frank must feel like a dying swan just now. What did the column in Monday's Times say? Exactly what TTPer have known for months:
SUMATRA SUNRISE
It's a funny thing about epiphanies - you never know when or where you'll have one. This particular one of mine came appropriately enough in a church - but this was a church in a village called Tuk Tuk on an island in a lake in Sumatra. It was the joyous singing of the congregation that triggered it, a congregation composed of families, of men and women and children of all ages joined together. The contrast between this seemingly ordinary Sunday service in a small Christian church with that of a mosque -men only, chanting like joyless robots, their children not with them, nor their wives whom they force to hide behind veils and burqas, was overwhelming. For these courageous churchgoers live on a Christian island surrounded by a Moslem sea. Sumatra is part of Indonesia, a country with the world's largest Moslem population. My heart went out to these people happily singing and celebrating their faith. Tears began streaming down my face and they would not stop. They were tears of gratitude and hope - for I believe these people will not succumb to Islamization but triumph over it. Here in Sumatra there is a Christian sunrise. I am going to encourage you to come here, to Lake Toba, and experience this yourself. After all, in what other magical paradise on the planet can you get a good meal for a dollar and a hotel room for $25? A spacious room with a balcony that has this view:
IT’S NOT JUST DEMOCRATS WHO REFUSE TO SEE WE’RE WINNING IN IRAQ
To a military professional, the tactical progress made in Iraq over the last few months is impressive. To a member of Congress, it's an annoyance. The herd animals on Capitol Hill -- from both parties -- just can't wait to go over the cliff on Iraq. And even when the media mention one or two of the successes achieved by our troops, the reports are grudging. Yet what's happening on the ground, right now, in Baghdad and in Iraq's most-troubled provinces, contributes directly to your security. In the words of a senior officer known for his careful assessments, al Qaeda's terrorists in Iraq are "on their back foot and we're trying to knock them to their knees." Do our politicians really want to help al Qaeda regain its balance?
THE IRS: END IT BECAUSE YOU CAN’T MEND IT
Do you fear the Internal Revenue Service, even though you have done nothing wrong? Most Americans do, and for good reason.
For decades, the courts, congressional hearings and the press have documented a steady stream of abuses by IRS personnel and federal prosecutors dealing with tax cases.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed charges against 13 former employees of the accounting firm KPMG because the government had violated their rights, in what had been billed by the government as its biggest-ever tax shelter case.
Despite overwhelming evidence of disgraceful and illegal government behavior (in the private sector it would be called extortion), the government has decided to appeal the case. Have they no shame?
Of, course, that's a rhetorical question. Who needs shame when you have guns and power instead?
JUST HOW PRO-TERRORIST ARE THE DEMOCRATS?
NBC News obtained last week a bulletin the Transportation Security Administration sent July 20 to airport officials and local law enforcement. "A surge in recent suspicious incidents at U.S. airports may indicate terrorists are conducting pre-attack security probes and 'dry runs' similar to dress rehearsals," the bulletin said. Passengers aboard United Air Lines Flight 93 almost certainly prevented either the U.S. Capitol building or the White House from destruction on 9/11. The suspicions of a teenage clerk in a video store in New Jersey likely prevented a murderous attack on U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix. Our first line of defense against a terror attack is a vigilant public. Which is why it is puzzling that Democrats would seek to punish Americans who report suspicious behavior to the authorities.
BORNEO SUNSET
This is a tale of tattooed headhunters and white rajahs, of fantastically rich sultans and weirdly demented princes, of spectacular natural wonders and their destruction, of Chinese Christians, Malay Moslems, and Javanese imperialists, of impossibly beautiful sunsets in the South China Sea. This is a tale of Borneo. It is also a tale of Christians under siege. 